Backend Engineer

You will work with Go/Golang, distributed systems, and API design. You will apply strong engineering practices to keep systems stable, secure, and performant. You will move quickly, adapt as the platform grows, and focus on delivering results for customers., * Be the founding backend engineer and build APIs for our observability product from the ground up.

• Design, build, and maintain robust backend systems from the ground up in Go/Golang.
• Architect APIs and services to help power agentic AI workflows.
• Apply strong engineering principles (modularity, testing, observability).
• Collaborate with product and leadership to ensure progress is tied directly to business results.
• Document decisions and trade-offs, ensuring clarity for current and future teammates.
• Proven ability to deliver usable systems under startup constraints: full ownership of outcomes, small teams, fast pivots, and delivering usable systems with limited resources.
• Work in a modified agile framework based on your direct input (no dogma or purist approach) with daily standups and project management coordinated between you, the COO, and two other engineers (frontend and backend).
• Take strategic and product guidance from a cofounder who will be in-office. The COO supports your growth and ensures you have what you need to succeed, while the cofounders focus on product excellence., The data is clear: resumes are one of the weakest predictors of job performance (Hunter & Schmidt's meta-analysis, ~0.1-0.2 correlation). They're noisy, biased toward pedigree, and reward formatting skills. That's why we combine structured interviews with research-backed assessments.

We don't believe in take-home projects that take dozens of hours. Instead, the entire at-home portion of our process takes about 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours total:

• ~45 minutes - Coding Skills Assessment
• ~45 minutes - Reasoning, Personality, and Communication Assessment After that, you and I will have a 45-minute interview, followed by a live work assessment lasting about 4-5 hours.

This makes the total interview process roughly 8 hours across all stages, focused, fair, and efficient.

To ensure the process is both predictive and scientific, we combine structured interviews with research-backed assessments:

• Fairness: Interviews can sometimes reward confidence over skill. Our assessments give every candidate the same chance to demonstrate their abilities, leveling the playing field.
• Effectiveness: Decades of research show that assessments are stronger predictors of job success than interviews alone. We focus on real skills, not just first impressions.
• For You: You're evaluated on what truly matters, your ability to do the work, not on resume details, background, or accent.

• Strong, validated expertise in software engineering with expertise shipping production systems from beginning to end.
• Deep expertise in Go/Golang with a demonstrated 3 years of backend engineering experience.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, concurrency, and microservices.
• Experience designing APIs and working with databases (SQL based).
• Proven ability to pick up new technologies quickly and apply them pragmatically.
• Ability to turn messy, ambiguous problems into solvable projects, with clear scoping, regular updates, and visible progress for stakeholders
• Excellent communication: clearly defines projects, can explain assumptions, trade-offs, and progress clearly.

Bonus Points

• Prior experience with LLM infrastructure, agent frameworks, or AI products.
• Familiarity with Vercel, Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms (AWS/GCP).
• Experience in high-growth startups.
• Previous founders or founding engineers

• Work directly with founders who are repeat YC alumni.
• Ownership over core backend systems powering cutting-edge AI agents.
• Boulder office with mountain views, plus a culture that values health and balance.

Compensation and Growth $140,000 USD + Equity (.1%) Health, Dental, and Vision Insurance + Dependents Four Weeks Paid Time Off (We try to encourage you to take time off)

What We Value We hire for mental models, not buzzwords. The right candidate will embody:

• Bias to Progress * Keeps work moving, persistent in ambiguity, avoids getting stuck.
• Business Results First * Prioritizes impact over complexity, identity, or "cool tech."
• Simplicity Bias * Builds the leanest path to the outcome, avoids overbuilding.
• Ownership * Takes responsibility, integrates feedback, doesn't deflect blame.
• Adaptability * Learns new tools fast, evolves methods as the field shifts.
• Collaborative Pragmatism * Can disagree respectfully, align quickly, and execute.

Interview Process

At Humoniq, we've designed our hiring process to be fair, predictive, and respectful of your time. You'll have the opportunity to show what you can do, on your own terms, by choosing when and where to complete the next steps, so you can perform at your best.

We are a YC-backed startup with $8M+ raised, led by repeat founders who've built and scaled successful companies before. Our mission is ambitious: we're building deeply-integrated AI systems that understand, reason, and act to solve real-world problems in travel and transport. We're not another "move fast and burn out" shop. We believe peak productivity comes when humans have psychological safety, time to sleep, move, eat well, and be understood. That's the culture we're building. We don't believe in overwork or equating hours with outcomes. What matters is results tied to business and customer outcomes-nothing else. This will eventually become a hybrid role once we build out the team.